Sustainability

Consider this: Consumers in China went through 57 billion pairs of disposable wooden chopsticks in 2009 alone, which equates to more than 3.8 million trees. For a nation that ranks 139th worldwide in forest land per capita, that means that China’s forests may be wiped out in 20 years if consumption continues at that rate.

Last winter Greenpeace East Asia and Ogilvy Beijing teamed with artist Yinhai Xu and students from 20 Chinese universities to stage a public awareness campaign. Together, they gathered some 80,000 pairs of used chopsticks from Beijing restaurants to assemble a “Disposable Forest” in a popular Beijing shopping center. The display urged people to carry around their own pair of chopsticks when eating out and asked them to sign a pledge to stop using disposable chopsticks. The 80,000 pairs of chopsticks that were transformed into four full-sized trees are a mere sliver of how many disposable chopsticks are used worldwide. Even though wood is a renewable resource is it really worth it to cut down a tree to make an eating utensil that is used once and thrown away?

This animated video on climate change comes from the WWF Brazil. It’s part of a trilogy titled “Pense de Novo,” or “Think Again.” Without voiceover or text, the 30-second video shows how humans have managed to pollute the planet. As we commemorate Earth Day on Friday, it is something to think about…again.

From the ever-inventive designer Stefan Sagmeister comes this TV commercial for Standard Chartered Bank. Sagmeister’s approach to typography continues to shock and delight. Who can forget his 1999 poster for an AIGA lecture that displayed the words actually carved into his skin? Sagmeister has also turned typography into an environmental art form by constructing words in — and out of — nature. You can’t help but read and reflect on the message.

The advertising commercial for Standard Chartered Bank aptly represents the multinational scope of the company’s business, which was formed in 1969 through a merger of the Standard Bank of British South Africa, founded in 1863, and the Chartered Bank of Australia, India and China, founded in 1853. International and exotic, steeped in cultural traditions and totally modern, the TV spot makes the bank’s philosophy feel sustainably organic and mindful of the global markets it serves.

Want to set an elegant table for the holidays? Don’t just put any old bottled water out for guests. Make it French. Make it designer. Make it from the Evian Paul Smith Limited Edition collection. In a tradition started in 2008 with a limited edition bottle designed by Christian Lacroix, followed in 2009 with Jean Paul Gaultier, Evian has just released the Paul Smith Limited Edition 2010 bottle.

The renowned British fashion icon designed the bottle in vibrant colors with a festive theme, featuring his signature stripes and five different multi-colored caps to collect. These days selling bottled water has become harder with countless brands vying for market share and sustainability proponents urging people to drink water filtered from the tap, even adding the bubbly themselves. With its designer bottles, Evian, owned by Danone Waters of America, isn’t touting how its product tastes, but how its bottles look. At $13.95 (USD) for a single 750ml bottle and $118 (USD) for a 12-bottle case, what consumers are buying is imaginative packaging that happens to have water inside.

Triple bottom line: In business, “bottom line” refers to the line at the end of a financial statement that shows net profit or loss. Now when companies calculate the bottom line of a product or program, they factor in social, environmental and financial results to determine whether the overall return was positive or negative. One out of three is no longer good enough.

Strikethrough: When editing in Word software, a strikethrough means a line drawn through text meant to be deleted. In printer-speak, strikethrough is a chemical reaction caused by putting an overall gloss coating over a spot dull varnish. Varnish neutralizes the gloss coating and stays dull while the rest of the sheet turns glossy. This technique gives designer the ability to make shapes or words appear ghostlike out of a solid color or create the effect of multiple finishes on an image.

Good design begins with considering what happens to the product at the end of its useful life. The materials and processes you select have ramifications beyond the marketplace and the consumer. Here’s a case in point.